December
4You
don't need endless time and
perfect conditions. Do it now.
Do it today. Do it for twenty
minutes and watch your
heart start beating.

Barbara Sher

Today's
Meditation:

I often choose to put things off. Sometimes it
just seems that circumstances aren't right for doing
anything from starting to write a new novel to changing
the oil in our cars. I may not start the novel
because I have too many other things to do, and the time
just isn't right--I've used that excuse before, and I'm
sure that I'll use it again. But when I look back
upon each day, I usually can find at least twenty minutes
to half an hour during which I could have worked on
one--and a year of twenty-minute segments definitely would
allow me to finish a novel, since I can easily write a
page in twenty minutes.
But I usually don't do so. I wait. And I
shouldn't. Maybe I'm too tired; perhaps I'm just too
preoccupied. No matter what the case, my lack of
action is my decision. And from my experience, it's
not the best decision I can make. I've often felt
like not doing something, but when I've "forced"
myself to do it, I've ended up enjoying myself immensely,
or at least getting a strong sense of satisfaction from
having accomplished something that I needed to accomplish.
As someone else has said--probably many people--conditions
are never just right. There's always something else
going on, something that we can use as a convenient excuse
for not acting, for not doing something we should or could
do. But usually action simply takes a decision to
act, and we end up finding reasons to make the decision
not to act. After all, not acting is easier, and
there's no risk of failure in it.
Tomorrow, when I look back upon today, I want to at least
recognize that I did something. I want to see that I
didn't let circumstances and fears control me or push me
into decisions that aren't the best for me. No
matter how daunting a task may appear, we'll never know
just how daunting it truly is until we actually undertake
it, and that requires us to act. Here, and now.

Questions to
consider:

What kinds of things often keep us from actually getting
up and starting on something that we want to start on?

Why do so many people seem to want to discourage us from
taking action on seemingly risky tasks?

What does Barbara mean when she says, "watch your
heart start beating"? Isn't it beating now?

For further
thought:

Conditions
are never just right. People who delay
action until all factors are favorable do nothing.

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